President Donald Trump and Press Secretary Sean Spicer both brought up the administration’s commitment to rolling back regulation and reforming Dodd-Frank on Thursday.
Spicer once again reinforced this during the White House daily briefing on Thursday afternoon.
He opened up his address to the press stating, “Dodd-Frank alone has resulted in 22,000 thousand pages of new regulations. While large banks can hire large armies of compliance officers whose sole purpose is to make sure they meet the ever-growing number of regulations, it increases costs of doing business for community banks, leading some not to engage in some forms of lending or simply due to the time and costs involved.”
“By reforming the regulatory system so that is efficient, effective and appropriately tailored, we’ll stop treating these critical institutions in our communities the same as banks that have exponentially more in assets, enabling them to engage even more with small business and entrepreneurs that stimulate local economies,” he continued.
The Dodd-Frank reference opened up the briefing but was quickly lost in a sea of concerns on the Affordable Care Act and the GOP’S replacement for it.
But while it was muddled into a larger picture of Trump’s plans for change, the topic continues to a big enough priory to keep making its way into the President’s agenda.
Spicer made the comments on Dodd-Frank since President Trump meet with CEOs of Small and Community Banks earlier that day for the National Economic Council Listening Session.
Pictured in the tweet below is the group of CEOs with the president.
Great listening session with CEOs of community banks today at the @WhiteHouse! https://t.co/kQ8p2Y6nBV pic.twitter.com/TyNGFWSpiM
— President Trump (@POTUS) March 9, 2017
At the listening session, President Trump said:
Today's discussion is crucial to my jobs agenda and to the American people. Community banks play a vital role in helping create jobs by providing approximately half of all loans to small businesses, and that's been dwindling because the community banks have been in big trouble.
Nearly half of all private-sector workers are employed by small businesses. We must ensure access to capital. Small businesses — small businesses to grow. Community banks are the backbone of small business in America. We are going to preserve our community banks.
You probably know this — I signed an executive order on regulation on February 3rd, I believe it was. And that's a big executive order, a very powerful executive order. It's taking a lot of the regulation away. You'll be able to loan. You'll be able to be safe. But you'll be able to provide the jobs that we want and also create great businesses.
The comments are simply the latest blurbs from President Trump that further push the message in his executive order to roll back the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act, the landmark legislation passed in wake of the financial crisis.
